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May I Borrow This Instrument?

from Affirmations and Storms Returning by Eric George

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lyrics

Tradition

I

Your crystalline consciousness won't save us

Even the copper in the penny arcade
Of your spirituality was mined
In corners of the Earth utterly forgotten

Repay the priestess of a thousand years ago
By drinking the stolen water of her children

You breathe into that sadness
For a few moments within a week
In a class that fits somewhere
In the fissure between fitness and fabrication

Chanting like crows in rows of colorful clothes
Sewed by factory hands forced off their land
To submit to the law of supply and demand

Your Dharma of detachment is a notion
That floats like plastic in the middle of the ocean

Your mindfulness practice is a helpful distraction
From the sounds of fracking in your neighbor's backyard

Watch with forgiveness as businesses
Burn holes into the lungs of the child
That resides within a fifty mile radius of the coal mine

Go ahead and empathize with the poor lost soul of
The CEO so he might know how to love
Because you gave him a sprinkle of magic dust
From your pouch of boundless compassion

You're up against a tank
Waiting for your magic carpet to take flight
While the sun is setting
On the age we thought would never end

And when the bees have stopped buzzing
And the peepers are deafening in their silence
We'll all hear you say,

“Namaste”

II

To me, the old song is fruit
On the end of a limb
Of an old tree.

It is picked, and the fruit grows back.

I feel the weight
Of the swelling seed
As the branch bends gently
And I wonder with excitement
In the thought of its taste.

You seem the tree is same
But the rain changes
From year to year,
Century to century,
Such that the sweetness now
Was bitterness then,
But the taste stays familiar
And akin to the one some ancestor
Once tasted on their tongue
As a gift from the
Hard labor season.

To wait until the fruit is ripe,
To feel each footstep towards the bough
And extend my hand to receive the gift,
The fruit of purpose and practice.

But perhaps I hold this notion too dear.
Some just that I'm the old man
Yelling at the kids to get off his lawn,

But the kids are breaking branches

Just the other day a young man
With a steel string guitar
Slung over his back
Pulled a pale green fruit
Until the branch snapped.

He showed off the stick
For a month or two
But the fruit never grew
And the taste like sweet rain
And the reward of patience
He never knew.

Here is what I will say:

One needn't be an arborist
To study the beauty of a tree,
But if they're to hold dear
The health of the old growth
As they reach,
Perhaps a student
Is what they should be.

credits

from Affirmations and Storms Returning, released May 5, 2018

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Eric George Burlington, Vermont

Eric George is a Vermont-based songwriter, sound engineer, and performer of original music and poetry. One of the most prolific folk musicians of the Northeast music scene, he is intent upon maintaining the integrity of American folk music while taking a contemporary approach to songwriting. ... more

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